The Furnace at Katahdin
Iron Works
 From a building on its top,
workers dumped raw materials down into the furnace. These
included iron ore prepared in an ore kiln behind the furnace,
limestone from Rockland, and charcoal from the brick kilns.
When these mixed together in a flame, superheated by air blown
into the furnace, the iron melted. The impurities or "slag"
were lighter, so they floated on top of the liquid iron and
could be drained off. The molten iron ran to the bottom of
the furnace and into the casting house. There, the iron flowed
into troughs cut in the sand by workers with shovels. When
the metal cooled the process had created rough iron bars known
as pigs.
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